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touchmycoat · 3 years

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qijiu Second Exorcists AU

...the Heavenly Demons have come to destroy the Exorcists. Transmigrator SY!SQQ gets kidnapped/lured deep into some hidden chamber at the base of the Spirit Caves, and he finds there old members of the Alliance like those monk guys as well as YQY’s bloody corpse. Noah!LBH tells SQQ that he’s going to show his old mentor just how messed up and hypocritical the Exorcist Alliance is. He would destroy the Sects with the very thing they created, the thing they fear most and hates them in return.

YQY revives because that’s his claim to fame as an exorcist—the strongest immortal sword. SQQ tries to get his attention but his eyes are completely fixed on the body underneath the glass, sealed in the ground beneath him.

“Xiao Jiu...?”

With his dream demon powers, LBH opens up YQY’s memories. SQQ tries to help and also gets sucked in. There they witness the truth of the Alliance’s past, and who exactly YQY and “Xiao Jiu” are.

YQY’s earliest memory is climbing out of a pool of freezing water. The scientists call him Number Seven. There was a Number Five and a Number Six, but they were both destroyed only days after Seven met them. You, the scientists explain to Seven, have been given these special bodies thanks to us. You can withstand an incredible amount of damage. You are meant to be compatible with a spiritual weapon called an Innocence. We have to keep trying to synchronize you with the Innocence.

Eight doesn’t last so long either.

LBH and SQQ watch as YQY, for some reason, survive each attempt at an Innocence harmonization. He gets utterly decimated every time, limbs and bones flying everywhere, but somehow, there’s always just enough strength in him to knit his body back together. He smiles. He’s polite and gets along with people. He’s in a constant cycle of pain and bandages, and he goes and sits by the icy pools all the time, staring out at the water looking blank.

One inevitable day, Nine comes crawling out of the water. He’s small and scowls a lot. Seven is over the moon to have company and takes Nine under his wing. Nine is always hissing and glaring at people. He rejects everyone but Seven. He’s grumpy but he hovers close.

The two of them keep getting sent into the room with the Innocence. They die, over and over. Nine screams and cries about it sometimes, why, why, why do they have to live like this. Isn’t there any other way. Why them. Who were they. Why couldn’t they escape.

Meanwhile, Seven is having dreams. He’s seeing things he’s never actually seen in this life before. I think, Seven tells Nine, it might be my past life. Of course, Nine realizes. Why else would we be the special ones? We must have been dead or dying, and the weapons they keep trying to inject into us belong to our past selves.

The dreams are vague, but gives Seven a surname—Yue. He knows he is called Yue Something, and that there’s another surname just hovering in his memory, Shen. For some reason, this Shen person feels really important to him, but he doesn’t quite know why.

When he tells Nine, Nine grows jealous and wistful. So your name can be Yue Qi? What about me then, I don’t have a name.

Well you can be Shen Jiu then.

I thought the Shen surname belongs to Qi-ge’s most important person.

Xiao Jiu is my most important person.

...For now.

But still, Yue Qi can tell Shen Jiu’s happy with the surname. They continue living this way, until SJ’s whispering to YQ in excitement about getting his own dreams too.

The dreams, however, as they become more lucid, are making YQ sadder and sadder. On one particularly feverish day, after a bad synchronization, YQ sees what happened in full—his most important person, screaming and reaching for him as he’s dragged out of a house by his legs. He’s broken and bloody and dying but he keeps trying to crawl back to where that door’s slammed shut.

Go back, was everything he knew. I have to go back.

A demon appears overhead, grinning. The last thing YQ saw was its teeth.

Meanwhile, a feverish YQ’s body is falling apart. SJ overhears the scientists talking about terminating Seven before another bad reaction like Eight happens, and SJ figures no fucking way. He steals YQ’s body away, but is found halfway out. He throws YQ’s body out a nearby exit and dives back in himself to distract the scientists.

YQ wakes up disoriented but with the newfound clarity of mind to call his Innocence to him. Its name, he learns, is Xuan Su. He’s outside of the facility and can escape, but he decides to go back for Xiao Jiu.He’s got the Innocence now, so surely that’s enough for the experiment. Surely he can petition for SJ to be spared, or maybe they can be partnered together. Surely everything’s fine now.

YQ returns to a bloodbath. He finds almost every single scientist at the facility slaughtered, the room burning, and Xiao Jiu standing in the middle of all of it, covered in blood with an Innocence blade in hand.

Qi-ge, you’ve come back. But I have to kill you now.

YQ hurries to draw his blade to meet SJ’s onslaught. SJ, it turns out, has also regained his memories. His perspective on the matter is a lot worse than YQ’s though. Qi-ge, do you know what I saw? I saw myself begging them to let me live. That I could still be saved. They just had to give me the cure, and I could live and go save—

Go save...?

...forget it. Qi-ge, we have to die. I have to kill you. I won’t let you become a tool for the Alliance.

...No. Xiao Jiu, I can’t die. Memories regained, YQ has something to live for. He has to find his most important person. Please, nobody else has to die—

I’ve already killed all the others. Nobody else has to go through what we went through. There will be no more of our kind—

Xiao Jiu! Please! You’re scaring me, YQ wants to say. You’re more terrifying than any demon in our memories.

SJ seems to see the unspoken words in his eyes anyways. SJ goes cold, summons his sword. YQ’s hand is shaking.

You know I’m stronger than you, he whispers. I don’t want to kill you.

You don’t want to kill me but you also won’t let me kill you, SJ laughs bitterly. Qi-ge always has to lie about something.

They fight. As the facility comes crumbling down around them, YQ deals the killing blow. He looks up and sees the sky for the first time as SJ falls. It looks even bigger and emptier than in his memories.

The dream-memory ends. LBH and SQQ are booted out, and YQY staggers to his feet. SJ, underneath the glass, is waking up.

“Doesn’t Sect Leader Yue have questions for the Research Team?” LBH asks. “About the Third Exorcist project, perhaps? Where the seeds for their hybridization came from?”

YQY calmly calls for Xuan Su, SQQ sees his hand tremble just once.

“Cang Qiong will defend the Alliance,” YQY says. “No matter what it takes.”

“Qi-ge’s already killed me once, after all,” SJ says, standing up. His voice is rough from disuse. There’s a faint shape of a smile on his lips, but his eyes are cold. “What’s a second?”

They begin fighting. SQQ rushes to interrupt.

“Zhangmen Shixiong! Stop this!”

“I can’t,” is YQY’s grim answer. “Xiao Jiu is much stronger than before, and I know better than anyone how determined he can be. He won’t stop until I’m dead.”

SJ agrees. The fight escalates rapidly. SQQ turns his attention to SJ.

“But I don’t understand, why do you want to kill him so badly? Didn’t you grow up together? Aren’t you his friend?”

“I was his friend,” SJ hisses. Meanwhile, YQY is drawing more and more of his life force to kill the rapidly regenerating SJ. “I tried to save him from precisely this fate, and look at him now—a dog of the Alliance. You want to find your most important person? Newsflash Qi-ge, he’s gone. He’s been dead and gone and he’s only a method for the Alliance to control you.”

“You’re wrong,” YQY says, and SJ frowns, hearing something in his tone. But the fight is continuing, and before he can ask, SQQ tries intervening. Annoyed, SJ turns an attack on SQQ, and YQY turns around and saves SQQ just in time.

At YQY’s shout of Shen-shidi! SJ’s eyes go wide.

“...No. No!“ All his vitriol is all of a sudden turned on SQQ, his attacks getting more vicious. “You filthy liar, you’re not him!”

“Xiao Jiu, calm down!” YQY shouts. “I never said it’s him!”

“But I know what you’re like, Qi-ge,” SJ spits, sounding more like he’s in pain than any of the previous times Xuan Su has split him apart. His eyes have gone red. “Such a caretaker, such a martyr. You always want to be saving someone, so will anybody do? Your most important person is not so important anymore? Qi-ge ran me through with his sword a thousand times just for any harlot he picks up off the street and gives that last name to—”

“Xiao Jiu!”

YQY’s hair had gone white, more and more of his soul being sublimated through Xuan Su as he cuts SJ down. But SJ is similarly relentless, reforming and regrowing his limbs, all the while shouting about how this is all Qi-ge’s fault, it’s only because of Qi-ge that he’s like this, that Qi-ge has to kill him, and they should just both die here already for the good of everybody.

Meanwhile, SQQ’s eyes find LBH, who’s been standing calmly aside all this time because his purpose has been achieved. Teeth gritted, SQQ tells LBH that fine, he gets it already, the Alliance has been responsible for a horrible thing. But LBH wants to show everybody the truth? Then let’s get the full truth out there. Show us what SJ knows.

LBH understands immediately, eyes widening just a little.

“Shizun suspects...?”

He considers it for long enough that SQQ is antsy on his feet.

“Luo Binghe! I said I believe you! Take out Shen Jiu’s memories and...and I’ll leave here with you.”

LBH’s gaze sharpens.

“Do you promise?”

“I do.”

After one last considering stare, LBH waves a hand. He begins pulling the memory out of SJ, but SJ seizes it, hiding it away instead. LBH frowns, but says that as long as SJ has a hold on it, he can’t show YQY. Meanwhile, he’s fulfilled his promise. Shizun should go with him now.

“No.” LBH opens a portal and SQQ’s mouth falls open. “Binghe! You—”

“Don’t go with him, Shen-shidi,” YQY says in a rush, pushing himself further into overdrive. SJ watches him with a furious, complicated expression. “I’ll—I’ll hurry up. I’ll be done here soon, just don’t—”

“You’ll go back,” SJ utters, voice shaking as he spits, “for everybody but me. You’ll destroy me twice to save your stupid world. That’s why I’m going to kill you.”

“Stop this.” SQQ gets out of LBH’s hold and intervenes once more. He barely blocks an attack from SJ. “Look, I know who you are! Why don’t you just tell him you’re—”

“Shut up!” Another attack, knocking SQQ to the side. LBH tries to block him but SQQ pushes him aside again, lunging back in. “You don’t know anything! He has to—one of us has to die. He needs to die. I’ll make sure of it if it’s the last thing I do.”

A bit dead-eyed, YQY throws his all into a final attack.

“Zhangmen Shixiong! Wake up!”

Xuan Su runs SQQ through and everything freezes. YQY snaps out of it and his eyes go wide.

“Shen—”

“Take,” SQQ says through gritted teeth, “a goddamn look at Shen Jiu’s face, Shixiong, and think.”

Numbly, YQY looks over and sees SJ glaring as usual. But he also finally sees the red in SJ’s eyes, the tear tracks on his cheeks.

“What won’t he tell you about what he remembers, hm?” SQQ is honestly kind of pissed at this point, ‘cause that sword in the gut hurts, alright? He’s been hiding the extent of the wound as best he could from LBH, but now he can’t hold himself upright anymore, slumping over. Demonic energy suddenly explodes around them. Jesus christ is this what period pain feels like. “Who is he that wants you dead before you find out his identity?!”

It doesn’t take much more for YQY to put the pieces together. He’s staring at SJ. He can’t breathe.

“You’re—”

“Qi-ge watch—”

LBH attacks, Xin Mo vicious and bloodthirsty as it tries to cleave YQY in half for hurting SQQ. SJ takes the blow instead, his Innocence shattering beneath the sword and an arm and a leg being chopped away. YQY catches him. SQQ works up the last of his energy to shove them both into the portal LBH has already opened, sealing it behind them.

“Shen—!”

“Go,” he tells YQY right before the portal closes. Neither of them look to be in a good state, but SJ in particular is literally falling apart, the demonic energy it had taken to revive him battered away by his fight with YQY. “Talk, before...”

The door closes.

They hit water.

YQ drags them both out and sits exhausted against a wall. SJ’s in his arms, but has buried his face in YQ’s shoulder and refuses to look up.

SJ’s tense and helplessly shaking, his body useless at this point. He’s waiting for...something.

He gets a soft kiss to the crown of his head, gentle but full of feeling. His eyes go wide and his head snaps up.

“You—”

“I’m so glad,” YQ says, crying and shaky but painfully earnest in his smile, “I found you. My most important person. I’ve finally found you.”

And SJ can’t take it anymore either, tears toppling out. He opens his mouth but no words come out, so YQ continues to talk.

“I was right. From the very beginning I was right to give you that surname, wasn’t I? It’s always been you. Qi-ge was a fool for not realizing. You were right in front of me and I—”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” SJ blurts out, brows furrowing tightly at YQ’s fresh tears. “I knew you’d blame yourself, I knew—”

“I left you dead,” YQ chokes out, “for years. All while I went around traveling and eating and having fun—”

“Yeah, stupid Qi-ge. You should’ve just let me kill you.”

The tone comes out more panicky than appropriately grumpy, but YQ understands. He laughs—in pain but he laughs, clutching SJ closer.

“What now?” SJ murmurs. “Your Shidi’s closed the portal, it doesn’t look like anybody will come to get you. Are you waiting around to die with me or what?”

YQ pulls back, still smiling, and nods. For some reason, that makes SJ cry some more, gnashing his teeth at YQ’s chest. YQ’s lips find his forehead.

Somehow, whenever I leave, I never manage to make it back to you. So this time, I just won’t leave at all.

#yes this IS a dgm AU sdjfalskjdfbalshdflkajsdfalknkj #qijiu #exorcists AU #fuck dude i'm so choked up about this lkdfjnalskdjfnlasdf #all i do is reread the kanda/alma arc every 6 years and cry about it #but surprise the grumpy long-hair swordsman isn't LQG #also they don't die in the end :((((( nuh-uh YQ finds a magical way of keeping SJ alive and together they return to Cang QIong #just in time for the next arc that i Do Not Know #lolol how about that millennium earl!LBH action tho alksjdflakdbjfdsf #i just don't remember enough of the dgm canon to make it track nfjdnfksjnfdkd #but anyways yeah kanda!YQY and alma!SJ #that's it that's the whole thing #plot stockpile

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